“Frustrated at having been beaten out by the lower prices of their Mexican rivals, white competitors resorted to murdering cartmen, driving off their oxen and burning their carts and freight. Economic rivalry with Mexicans continued to inspire retributive action by whites throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” (Carrigan and Webb) posted by Charles Johnson at How the Tejanos Became Non-White 01 Feb 2017 2:13 pm
1857: Cart War in context of Anglo lynchings of Mexicans. / BB&W 49
William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, "Muerto por Unos Desconocidos (Killed by Persons Unknown): Mob Violence against Blacks and Mexicans," in Beyond Black & White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the U.S. South and Southwest, edited by Stephanie Cole and Alison M. Parker (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 49ff.Although the California gold rush witnessed some of the worst acts of mob violence against Mexicans, whites also resorted to savagery–in order to secure economic supremacy–on other occasions. Actions during the Texas “Cart War” of 1857 exemplify this. During the 1850s, Texas businessmen developed a freight-hauling service between Indianola and San Antonio. Frustrated at having been beaten out by the lower prices of their Mexican [50] rivals, white competitors resorted to murdering cartmen, driving off their oxen and burning their carts and freight. Economic rivalry with Mexicans continued to inspire retributive action by whites throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1898, a group of Gonzales, Texas men–probably poor white sharecroppers in competition with Mexican immigrants–posted this warning: “Notice to the Mexicans. You have all got ten days to leave in. Mr. May Renfro and brother get your Mexicans all off your place. If not, you will get the same they do. Signed, Whitecaps.” In the 1920s, alarm at the increasing number of Mexican laborers who settled in the Rio Grande valley contributed to the growth of the local Ku Klux Klan.[53]
- [53]Waco Times-Herald, Feb. 17, 1898; David J. Weber, ed., Foreigners in their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexicans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), p. 153; George P. Garrison, Texas: A Contest of Civilizations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973), p. 274; Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 515-16; J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1931), pp. 179-80; Charles C. Alexander, The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), p. 24. For further evidence of economic competition precipitating mob violence, see Mary Romero, “El Paso Salt War: Mob Action or Political Struggle?” Aztlán 16, nos. 1-2 (1985): 119-38.↩
